Triple Threat in Brother’s Keeper
Brother’s Keeper is a Cobalt City novella featuring the superhero trio known as Triple Threat. Their team name is a bit of a inside joke between Jeremy and I about “triple threats” (traditionally singing, dancing, and acting) that we sometimes use about three random (and not always useful) skills or characteristics. The members of Triple Threat are Dulcamara, Terra Firma, and Exspiravit, and all of them appear in earlier stories before teaming up.
Dulcamara, aka Friday Jones, is the avatar of Freya, who has taken on aspects of Freya’s domain related to plants. She was the character I played in a Cobalt City RPG run by the creator of the Cobalt City Universe, Nathan Crowder. Her powers have a lot of similarities to those of Poison Ivy from DC Comics, but Friday is more interested in using her powers to help solve world hunger. She occasionally butts heads with her patron, who would prefer her to focus on a different interpretation of fertility, but Friday is nothing if not stubborn! Her superhero name is part of the scientific name for various types of nightshade.
Terra Firma, aka Evan Sulla, originally appeared in my short story, “Double Angel,” which appeared in Avatar of Freya. (This isn’t the first of my published stories where she appeared, but it’s the first one I wrote.) She’s a shapeshifter, though her control over that power is not absolute (though she’s gotten better at controlling it with practice). In “Double Angel,” she showed up looking like Friday’s friend Angel DeSantes (aka A-Girl), but her personality wasn’t quite right, which clued Friday in to the deception. After getting to know Terra better and understanding her origin, Dulcamara was happy to take the new hero under her wing and work with her in the future. Her superhero name is slightly ironic, given her lack of control over her powers, but I also liked the idea of playing with “Terra” being a homonym for “Tara,” which seems like a perfectly normal name.
Exspiravit (Exie), aka Steph Goff, doesn’t have superpowers, but she’s a huge fan of superheroes and has helped various heroes with their operations. She first appeared in “Comeback Tour” in Coast to Coast Stars as Gray Dawn’s roommate. While Dulcamara and Terra are Millennials, Exie is a very late Gen X or Xennial. She possesses hacking skills, the ability to multi-task, and a somewhat encyclopedic knowledge of superheroes, making her great at support from the comfort of her desk (and often wearing a snuggie, except when she’s called on it). Her superhero name is a nod to the idea of a ghost in the machine. (And yes, all three of the members of Triple Threat have names taken directly from Latin!)
Check back on Thursday, when I’ll be talking about a recently published Triple Threat-adjacent story that’s connected to Brother’s Keeper!
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